How Flowers Made Our World and Heated Social Media Debates with David George Haskell (author of The Forest Unseen)
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE: Nature + Pop Culture News with Jessica Murnane
Jessica Murnane
4.9 • 651 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the significant role flowers have played in creating our world, the biological reason we're attracted to flowers, women in horticultural, and David's inside pick (which is sort of an outside one).
About this week's guest: David George Haskell is a writer and biologist acclaimed for his lyrical explorations of the living world. Haskell is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, for The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken. He is recipient of an Award in Literature from American Academy of Arts and Letters. Haskell has also written essays and multimedia experiences for The New York Times, Emergence Magazine, and other venues. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Sciences at Emory University.
Show notes!
This week's sponsor: The Working Garden Project
How Flowers Made Our World
Sounds Wild and Broken
To advertise on the podcast: hello@baskergardens.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This season is brought to you by the Working Garden Project. Did you know that 74% of employees struggle to disconnect from work? The significant percentage say that their job negatively impacts their mental and social well-being. And many employees are considering leaving jobs that don't support their overall health. They need solutions. And based on all the positive benefits that we know that can |
| 0:22.4 | come from nature, nature can be one of them. The Working Garden Project is a nationwide effort to |
| 0:28.6 | bring the benefits of nature and communal gardening to workplaces across the country. To learn more about |
| 0:34.5 | how to bring the Working Garden Project to your company, head to |
| 0:37.9 | Working Garden Project.com. Whether your company is big or small, the Working Garden Project |
| 0:42.7 | has solutions to create more happiness, engagement, and productivity in the workplace. |
| 0:48.4 | Again, that's working gardenproject.com. |
| 1:05.8 | Okay. Gardenproject.com. Hello. I'm Jessica Mernan, and this is inside and outside. I'm a horticultural therapist and writer who is |
| 1:12.5 | equally obsessed with nature and pop culture. So on this podcast, we talk about one outside thing, |
| 1:19.4 | which involves gardening, nature, birds. And then my guest shares an inside thing, like |
| 1:24.6 | pop culture, news, food, and fashion trends they're obsessed with or hate, |
| 1:29.2 | or any current weird inside obsessions. One quick note before we get to today's guest, |
| 1:37.3 | when I used to do teach people how to do podcast, I would drive home the importance of consistency. Consistency is one of the most important |
| 1:47.0 | things about a successful podcast. And I've been so bad at consistency this season. I know I missed a few |
| 1:54.6 | weeks and I'm dealing with some family and personal things right now that's been hard to be consistent. |
| 2:03.0 | I wrote a whole book about all my personal things. So I will spare you the details about this one. |
| 2:09.0 | Just know that I'm working hard to get back to this being a weekly schedule, I promise. |
| 2:14.9 | And even if I missed a week, this episode is worth like five episodes because |
| 2:20.7 | our guest today is so, so good. I'm talking to biologist, author, and two-time finalists for |
| 2:27.0 | the Pulitzer Prize and nonfiction, David George Haskell. He has written a lot of books, has won a ton of awards. I will include all his books and bio and the show notes. |
| 2:38.7 | It's just incredible how much he's accomplished. I just recently discovered his work through his latest book, How Flowers Made Our World. |
| 2:48.2 | And after reading the first page, I immediately reached out to see if he would come on |
... |
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